LIVEJOURNAL ENTRY
We just got back from Anime Expo a couple days ago, and I think I've recovered enough now so I'll post my experience.
We left early morning last Wednesday and got to the hotel in LA sometime around 12:30. We waited a couple hours until Stephanie arrived to check us into the hotel/park our car. Then we unloaded everything into the hotel and met everyone who would be staying in the room. Stephanie, Greg, Abraham, Jason, Mark, Sonia, Brandon, Tony, and Nicole is most of everyone I think. For the first few minutes Chris and I were just kinda hanging out in the corner of the room, but I wanted to jump in because I knew if I were in the corner the first day it would become a trend for the rest of the trip and I wanted to have fun, so I jumped into the crowd fairly early on (I've really gotten better at doing that in the past couple years, it seems). After a little while we all went to pick up our pre-registration badges at the convention center. The convention was literally just across the street diagonally from us which was just awesome. We got the badges after a long wait in line (foreshadowing for what was to come) and then decided back at the hotel room to go to Little Tokyo for dinner. We hopped into a couple cars, Greg and I being the drivers, and went to nearby Little Tokyo. I wish we'd spent a little more time there - basically we just immediately went to a restaurant and then left when we were done. It was really good though, I had my curry and it was amazing. That night we watched Excel Saga on Chris' computer.
Thursday morning, which was the first day of the actual convention, started for Chris and I with the Opening Ceremony. It was in the Nokia theater, and it was pretty much just a big "welcome" thing, and it introduced all the guests of honor. One cool part was when some class from Japan came up and did some real-time voice acting. After the opening ceremony we got in line for Toshihiko Seki's panel. He was an apparently well-known Japanese voice actor who did things like Gundam and Ranma 1/2 and whatever. It was cool panel. After that we saw the ADV Sneak Panel, where he talked about ADV stuff and took some questions, then previewed one episode from "Akiba" (I think it was called), some new show of theirs. It was kinda crappy, seemed like a shitty Cartoon Network thing like Rave Master and whatever. Anyway, after that we went to the Exhibit Hall and looked at crap to buy. Then we stood in line for the rest of the day for the AMV contest. It was very very cool, a lot better than I thought it was going to be. The very first contest video played featured a song by freakin STAR ONE! I could believe it. Not only that, but it was set to the undeniably awesome Outlaw Star. Perfect. It was decided without seeing the rest of the videos that it would win best of everything. That night we watched Adult Swim stuff like Home Movies and Mission Hill and whatever was on.
Friday: The next morning we got up and stood in line for a while to get into David Hayter's panel, which was pretty freakin huge. It was great stuff, he was pretty funny. It was kinda nice to have a panel with an English speaker so that things don't get lost with a translator and whatnot, people can react as soon as things are said, and things move along quicker. After his panel we saw Evangelion 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone. Freakin awesome, I can't wait until it comes out/the rest of the movies are released. After that in the same screening room was "Sword of the Stranger", which was a masterpiece. I'll definitely be looking into it, I think Ando (the director, who was there to promote it) said it would be coming out in early 2009 or so. After that, we met up with Heater (Uncreativity) from the Excel Saga forums. That was pretty cool. We went to her art booth and checked that stuff out, then she gave us a new comic that she and her friend made called "Stand Up". She even personalized it by doodling for us. I read it that night, and it's funny. Anyway, we broke off and watched anime that was screening for the rest of the night. We started with Beck. ....meh, I didn't like it too much but we only saw a couple episodes and was clearly still building the story so I can't totally write it off. Then we watched half an episode of Stratos 4 which was pretty terrible, then watched Macross for a little bit. At 8pm Gunslinger Girl was showing, which I was sorta interested in. So we went over to that and saw the first DVD (5 episodes) and I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't all totally stupid like I would have thought based on the name. The next day I even bought the whole series box set (only 13 episodes, 35 bucks). Anyway, that night we watched Venture Brothers I think.
Saturday: The next morning we got up to get in line for the David Hayter signing session. Our plan was to get his autograph for Roger, and to get him to write (referring to his constant headaches) something like "Walk it off! - David Hayter". That would have been just perfect. But sadly all our efforts were for not as the signing session didn't last long enough to get to the front. We saw Masahiro Ando's panel immediately afterwards, who was an artist/storyboard artist for a bunch of things like the Bebop movie and Fullmetal Alchemist and whatnot, and had just directed his first movie (Sword of the Stranger). After that was "Paranormal Japan", a panel about Japanese folklore and creatures and things. It was apparently ridiculously popular, there was a huge huge long line to get into this little room. We just barely made it in. It was about an hour long or so. After that we watched half of Nausicaa and then got in line for the rest of the day for the Masquerade. The Masquerade started at 8 and went 'till about 10:45. It was alright, some of the skits were really good, but the rest felt like high school theme class skit ... deals... that they did at rallies. Meh. The hosts were incredibly entertaining though, I thought. Anyway, after that we went back to the room for the night. We watched various anime on Adult Swim. Bleach, Inuyasha, whatever, and the last episode of Death Note (woo!). They finally fished the series on Adult Swim I guess. Anyway, after that I tried to go to sleep because we had to drive back home in the morning. I ended up not being able to sleep until after 3am because it was hot and there was a conversation going on in the room.
Sunday we pulled out of the hotel just before 9am and made it home between 2 and 3 I think. We drove a total of almost EXACTLY 700 miles (like 699.5 or something).
Merch I bought: Cowboy Bebop shirt, Gunslinger Girl box set, Paranoia Agent box set, and a Metal Gear Solid button that says "Try pressing the Action button!" and has the triangle button on it. Also, I ended up getting the Metal Gear Solid codec as my ringtone as a result of the trip (we kept hearing people with it).
I had an amazing time, I definitely want to go again next year.
